Spiritual Death

While there aren’t any major, story-altering deaths in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, the main character goes through a type of spiritual death and rebirth through the novel. Stephen Dedalus finds himself constantly wavering between accepting and denouncing religion and the church. However, in going through varied phases of fearing God, loving him, disagreeing with the church, and then agreeing with its message, Stephen’s spirit goes through a period of darkness and then into peaceful searching. It makes the reader wonder if this is how a soul may feel after being the body passes on – a kind of relaxful drifting through the world to see what all is around us.

I think the reactions of the other characters in the novel to Stephen’s transformation mirror the reactions most people have from a loved one passing on. There is confusion as to why it even happen, maybe hurt that they no longer have the same person around, and then finally acceptance that life has a smooth current that can change each minute. The ending seems cathardic in this way because even with his former life becoming irrelevant, both Stephen and his friends can accept with solemn tolerance the new life that he will lead.

The only true deaths in Portrait are of somewhat distant relatives and activists whom Stephen never knew personally. Thus, Stephen hasn’t ever fully felt the pain of losing someone close and further illustrates his status as a young man with many experiences to have in his life.

What Shall Our Tomb Stone Read?

Once in a while, someone will be remembered not because of who he was, but because of how the world saw him. In Toni Morrison's Beloved, the ghost of a murdered baby has power over the other characters because the world she died in saw her death as a metaphor for the evils of slavery rather than the death of a child. Killed by her own mother, the ghost - Beloved - is stripped of her value as a child and human being and given a new identity. She becomes a symbol to reveal the injustices of slavery that are so great they can lead a mother to murder her first daughter.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why Beloved haunts her mother, Sethe. Sethe took away Beloved’s significance in society’s memory. Had Sethe decided to accept her actions in front of everyone as her own (rather than infuse the incident within Beloved’s story), then the world could distinguish the difference between Beloved and suffering. I believe that Beloved haunts Sethe partially because Sethe took away the meaning in Beloved’s death and turned her into a kind of martyr for slavery.

This book raises a side question – how can someone prevent another from shadowing his/her death with a fragmented meaning? I’m not entirely sure but I feel like it’s necessary to either persevere with a certain purpose until all know you stand for it completely before death and thus after, or depend on others to promote your message after you’ve passed on.

Completely Irrelevant

According to Meursault, the main character of Albert Camus’ The Stranger, death places no toll on humanity. Whether one has lived for others, for himself, as a millionaire, or impoverished, his death will become as matter of fact as a hiccup. While Meursault acknowledges the possibility for temporary grievance by loved ones, eventually no one will remember to grieve and one’s death will cease to have even nostalgic value.

Camus demonstrates this gloomy view through the murder of the Arab. Nobody appears to care that a man has been coldly murdered. His death’s most prominent effect on humanity is it provides an excuse to put Meursault on trial. However, Meursault’s trial becomes more of a social critique of his personality than a means for justice for the Arab. The Arab’s death doesn’t anger anyone and it isn’t mentioned or thought of except in courtroom formalities.

By calling death pointless, Meursault also calls life pointless. If death cannot create any commotion then it must be because life has not caused any. Meursault argues that life is pointless and the achievements of one man are never worthy of great praise because, in time, everything that’s been done would have been done anyway. Meursault believes that humanity, as a whole, only uses individuals to speed up the progress of inventions and discoveries, not to create them.

With such blunt cynicism, Camus strips away the usual ceremony that surrounds death in order to replace it with a sort of mechanic indifference. In the eyes of an existentialist, death cannot be measured as good or bad, it simply is and mustn’t be dwelled on